3dfx Voodoo3 2000 Reviewer's Manual page 17

Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999
Q. Does Voodoo3 support texture compression?
A. Yes, Voodoo3 supports 3dfx's "narrow channel compression" or NCC, a texture compression
format that we've used since the original Voodoo Graphics. Developers favor NCC because
visually, it is virtually lossless, meaning that you can't really see the difference between a
compressed texture and a non-compressed texture.
Q. Does Voodoo3 support anisotropic filtering?
A. When we launched at Comdex '98, this was primarily a software feature that we decided not
to productize after having reviewed the resulting image quality.
Q. Does Voodoo3 support full scene anti-aliasing?
A. This is primarily a software feature that is currently under review.
Q. Can you use Voodoo3 in SLI mode?
A. No.
Q. With the introduction of Voodoo3, will there be any revisions made to Glide?
A. We use Glide to tie together all of our hardware offerings with a common API. Glide 3.0 has
recently been released and Voodoo3 is fully compatible with Glide 3.0. Voodoo3 is also
backward compatible with the older Glide 2.X API.
Q. Will Glide be updated prior to the release of Voodoo3?
There will be unique Glide drivers for Voodoo3; however, the core Glide functionality and
programming interface will be unchanged for Voodoo3.
Q. Is Voodoo3 faster than Voodoo2 SLI? If so, how much faster?
A. Yes, the Voodoo3 3000 is faster than two Voodoo2 boards used together in the SLI
configuration. In terms of raw texture rate, the Voodoo3 3500 TV provides 366 million texels per
second versus 360 million for the Voodoo2 SLI, but that's just the beginning of the story.
Efficiencies stemming from Voodoo3's single graphics and texture frame buffer, as opposed to
the separate graphics and texture memories used by the Voodoo2, will produce further 3D-
performance improvements.
Q. Does Voodoo3 have any special support for AMD's K6-II, K6-III and 3DNow!
instructions?
A. We have worked diligently with AMD to ensure that our drivers for Voodoo3, as well as
drivers for Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo2, will get the maximum benefit from the 3DNow!
instruction set.
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